More on PuppyGate

I was wandering around the Intarwebz this morning, looking for further updates on PuppyGate, when I happened to visit Charles Stross’ blog and saw this earlier post of his, where he put up a reaction to the whole tiff over Clean Reader. What really made me giggle, though, was this remark:

It’s enough to drive anyone to drink, and indeed, “novelist” is right up there with “farmer” and “quality assurance engineer” in the alcohol consumption career stakes.

Me, I am both a novelist and a Quality Assurance Engineer! (I kid you not, this is my actual day job title.) It’s probably a good thing that I am not also a farmer, otherwise I would have to drink all the vodka.

And I gotta say, the whole PuppyGate thing–involving nomenclature which, from where I sit, is an insult to good puppies everywhere–has me wistfully eying the distinct lack of vodka in the house. In no small part because, as reported by James Nicoll and followed up upon by Dara’s post today, the Puppy Brigade is making no bones about being prepared to take down the Hugos if the current movement to vote No Award on everything wins out this year.

Lots of people with way more stature than me in the genre are speaking up on this–names like Scalzi, Martin, Wendig, Stross, Kowal, Hurley, and others. It’s also come up in discussions amongst the members of NIWA, since I realized, well, shit, we’re going to be trying to sell books at this coming Worldcon. Wherein tempers are likely to be running high. I warned NIWA last night that we might want to be on the lookout for this when we’re running our table in the dealers’ room, just in case any challenges arise to our ability to cordially and civilly sell our titles.

That I have to think about this at all makes me both angry and sad.

I don’t want the toxic politics of the broader U.S. culture to be infecting the genre I grew up on. I see a lot of cane-shakery from the Puppies about a loss of a sense of wonder in recent Hugo lineups–but y’know what stomps all over my sense of wonder? Knowing that there are people out there who are going to not only sneer at anything I write just because I’m female (and prone to writing heroines of color, women in positions of power, and queer people), but who will actively work to shout down anything I and authors like me try to do.

It’s enough to make me disenchanted with the publishing industry at large, and the US SF/F branch of it in particular. I’m a super-tiny fish that’s barely entered the pond–but I’m seeing pollution in the waters up ahead, and I seriously have to ask myself, do I want to swim there?

‘Cause right now, I’m thinking not.

I’m really hoping this particular oil spill can be cleaned up. I’m hoping that Wendig’s take on the matter is right and that SF/F (as well as society in general) will continue to move in a progressive direction. But right now the dinosaurs are still thrashing, and it’s very easy for tiny critters like me to get squashed.

And since that’s all bleak and everything, here. I think I need to close on a reminder of the joy of actual puppies, so here, have a pic of a happy corgi!

As Angela Highland, Angela is the writer of the Rebels of Adalonia epic fantasy series with Carina Press. As Angela Korra’ti, she writes the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series. She’s also an amateur musician and devoted fan of Newfoundland and Quebecois traditional music.